Download - Aronson-Mikraot Gedolot HaKeter
מקראות גדולות הכתרMikraot Gedolot haKeter--Biblia Rabbinica
Behind the scenes with the project team
Ya’akov Aronson Bar Ilan University Ramat Gan, Israel
Jewish tradition considers the Bible a Divine work---the Torah having been
dictated to Moses by God, and the books of the Prophets ( נביאים) and the Writings כתובים ( )
composed under Divine inspiration. This being the case, preserving an accurate Hebrew text
of the Bible has always been considered of utmost importance. But the nature of the Hebrew
language makes this a difficult task. Most words are based on three letter roots with prefixes
and suffixes added and vowels being placed under, beside and/or over the letters. And change
in one vowel can result in a different meaning, appropriate in context, for the same group of
letters. Properly placed cantillation notations also are important and an accurate text has to
properly record other signs too: secondary accents ) הגעיות( , dots over letters, letters written
smaller or larger than the main text, or isolated letters such as the inverted letters nun נ( )
before and after ויהי בנסוע הא רון (Num 10:35-36), and the notation of words whose reading is
slightly different than the letters in the text would indicate such as for Deut. 21:7. There are
even cases where an entirely different word should be read instead of the word appearing in
the text.
To insure the accuracy of this complicated text there developed a group of notes
referred to as the Masorah ( מסורה( —something passed on, or in short, tradition, a term
familiar to us from the opening Mishna of Pirke Avot- This . ליהושעמסרהמשה קב ל תורה הסיני ו
Masorah, probably written down before the 8th century, was a development of the previous
century and is really two compositions. The first, the Masorah Parva (קטנה), consists of brief
notations which generally are recorded beside the line to which they relate and give cryptic
information concerning the proper form of the text and/or impart additional pertinent
information. But these brief notes themselves became the subject of what is referred to as the
Masorah Magna ,)גדולה( a more complete explanatory text appearing in the upper or lower
margins of the page, and, if too long, continued at the end of that particular Biblical book.
For example, for the word Vehaaretz ( והארץ ( in Gen. 1:2 the following notation appears in the
Masorah Parva: .פ "ח ר The Masorah Magna expands explaining ח refers to eight
occurrences of the word Vehaaretz )פ "ר) ראש פסוק at the beginning of a Biblical verse. Then
the first words of the eight verses are quoted.
Though the purpose of the Masorah was to protect the integrity of the Biblical text, it,
itself developed different versions. The first attempt to produce a definitive text of the
Masorah, and based upon it an accurate Biblical text, was the second edition of the Mikraot
Gedolot ( ג דולות מקראות ) printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice, 1524-25 )ד "רפ, ונציה ( .
Responsible for this work was Bomberg’s proofreader, Ya’akov ben Hayim, who had
collected numerous manuscripts of the Masorah, compared them and produced what he
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considered an authoritative Masorah text. He then used that to produce an accurate text of the
Bible.
The Masorah did not appear in the first edition of the Mikraot Gedolot published by
Bomberg in 1517-1518 ) ה"רע, ונציה ( . As a matter of fact, the format of that edition was
different than that of the Mikraot Gedolot as we know it today. Today’s editions generally
consist of the Biblical text, an Aramaic Targum and a number of commentaries. The first
edition had the Biblical text, a Targum text for most books and at least one commentary for
each Biblical book (with five exceptions). A complete edition of the Bible with a commentary
on every book had never been published before. Ben Hayim’s edition, though adding the
Masorah and increasing the number of commentaries, was limited in its accuracy by the
manuscripts he had at hand, only a small number of those in existence, and before long
hundreds of errors had been noted by learned readers.
All of this is the subject matter dealt with by Bar Ilan’s Mikraot Gedolot haKeter
project team headed by Professor Menahem Cohen. It’s goal is the publication of an accurate
text of all the elements of the Mikraot Gedolot. The idea for the project came from comments
made during Professor Cohen’s student days about the state of the Mikraot Gedolot text by his
mentor Professor Moshe Goshen-Gottstein. Professor Goshen-Gottstein held positions at both
the Hebrew and Bar Ilan Universities as Professor of Semitic Languages and Biblical
Philology and was honored in 1988 for his accomplishments in this field by the awarding of
the Israel Prize, Israel’s equivalent of the Pulitizer Prize in the United States. Professor
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Cohen’s thesis, written under the direction of Professor Goshen-Gottstein, was entitled
Orthographic Systems in Ancient Masorah Codices and their Import for the History of the
Traditional Hebrew Bible Text, a subject from which the Keter project was be a natural
derivative. This project is sponsored jointly by three research units at Bar Ilan:
1) Institute for the Study of Medieval Biblical Commentaries;
2) Study of Biblical Manuscripts Project;
3) Institute of Computerized Knowledge in Judaic Studies,
and presently consists of Professor Cohen and ten researchers. Each of these is a specialist in
one of the areas dealt with by project and included are Bar Ilan faculty members and graduate
students. For most team members this is a part time endeavor combined with teaching or
research.
The edition is called Mikraot Gedolot haKeter ( מקראות ג דול ות הכתר ( because the Biblical
text used is that of what is universally agreed upon to be the most accurate Biblical text in
existence, the Aleppo Codex, in Hebrew כתר ארם צ ובה. This 10th century manuscript, whose
letters were written by Shlomo ben Bouya’a, was voweled and had the accompanying
Masorah written by Aaron Ben Asher, of famous Ben Asher family of Masorites—those
involved in preserving the exact text of the Bible. It was upon this text that the Rambam based
his laws about the Torah scroll ( הלכות ספ ר תו רה), and which he used as the text from which to
write his own Torah scroll. Written in Eretz Yisrael, it eventually became the property of the
Jewish community of Aram Zova--Aleppo, or Haleb, in Syria. When the United Nations voted
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in 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, riots broke out throughout the Arab
world to protest this decision and in Aleppo led to the burning of the synagogue in which the
Keter was stored causing extensive damage to the manuscript. For ten years afterward it was
hidden and eventually was brought to Israel where it is now at the Ben Zvi Institute in
Jerusalem. How much of the manuscript was actually consumed in the fire isn’t known, but
today about 1/3 of it is missing, including almost the entire Torah. It is known that some
missing pages of the Keter “disappeared” between its removal from the synagogue in Haleb
and the time it reached Jerusalem and in the 1980’s one of these missing pages containing part
of the text of the book of Chronicles, chapters 35-36, was donated to the Ben Zvi Institute to
be rejoined with the manuscript. It apparently had been in the possession of a former Haleb
resident and then passed on to others who decided its proper place was with the manuscript
itself.
Previous editions of the Biblical text based upon the Keter have been published. In the
1970’s Professor Goshen-Gottstein himself edited one and more recently an edition appeared
edited by Professor Mordechai Breuer. The recently published Keter Yerushalayim edition of
the Bible is also based upon the Keter. But Professor Cohen did not use any of these for the
new edition’s text. He insisted on a detailed reexamination of the manuscript of the Keter. For
comparison purposes about 100 other Biblical manuscripts were checked and of these the
team found that only fifteen had texts that were close to that indicated by the Masorah, the
closest being the Leningrad manuscript written in the 11th century.
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The most obvious problem for the project team was reconstructing the missing parts
of the Keter. Some of this work could be based on manuscripts of work done by Professor
Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto of the Hebrew University in 1943. The Haleb community
had a tradition that as long as it preserved the Keter the community would not be endangered.
They even feared letting outsiders see it. It took prolonged negotiations before Professor
Cassuto was allowed to consult the Keter and make notes about parts of the text but he didn’t
succeed in publishing these before his death. These notes provided important information that
helped with establishing the Torah text.
The basic letter configurations of the Torah could be determined by using other
reliable manuscripts. This consultation of other manuscripts was greatly facilitated by the
existence of the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, today a part of the Jewish
National and University Library in Jerusalem. The Institute was established in the 1950’s at
the suggestion of David Ben Gurion. Israel’s first Prime Minister felt that in the Jewish
homeland there should be copies of all the manuscripts of Hebrew compositions and the
Institute’s teams have roamed the world filming every Hebrew manuscript they could find.
With all of this material available on microfilm in Israel the Keter project team was not
required to travel far and wide to access manuscripts as had been necessary in order to
complete many other projects,
Establishing the proper vowels to be appended to the letters was in some cases
problematic, as was establishing the correct accents, dots, cantillation notations and other
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special notations. To cope with this challenge parallel configurations in other parts of the
Keter were checked to determine the accepted Keter practice. For example, different sets of
vowels can be added to the letters אכילה yielding the same meaning. A search of extant Keter
text for all uses of this configuration was conducted to determine how the letters were
voweled in the Keter.
The Keter’s text, and those of the control manuscripts, had been digitized as part of
the project and a search engine was developed to answer not only the problem outlined above,
but also a variety of problems that Professor Cohen had encountered during his studies over
the years. He thoroughly discussed specifications for the search engine with the programmer
engaged to write the program and carefully checked each stage of the program’s development.
Making the job easier was the fact that the programmer was his son, Shmuel. In an interview
Professor Cohen said that the development of the search engine became a family undertaking
and even outside the formal office setting discussions were conducted about problems and
challenges, for example at the Shabbat table. The operation of the search engine will be
described later in this paper.
The same comparative approach used to determine the exact Biblical text was used
for establishing the texts of the targumim and commentaries. For each a control text was
chosen. Then a group of relatively accurate manuscripts was chosen after visual inspection
and finally the text determined by comparing these with the control text.
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This task was less problematic. First of all, the complete texts existed. Second, they
don’t have the same status as the Biblical text. They were humanly composed, not Divinely
dictated or written under Divine inspiration. Hundreds of manuscripts were compared in the
process of establishing definitive texts. The most accurate manuscripts of the Targumim were
those from Yemen where Aramaic remained a living language for much longer than in other
areas, thus resulting in more exact copies of the text. Even today there are Yemenite
synagogues where the Torah reading on Shabbat is accompanied by the reading of the parallel
Targum section.
A limitation of the original edition of the Mikraot Gedolot was the amount of material that
could be printed on the page. For this reason commentaries no less important than those
selected for the original edition were not included. Also, because of space limitations, some
commentator’s works appear accompanying some Biblical books but not others. For this
edition of the Mikraot Gedolot a two-page layout was adopted and this allows the addition of
some of the major medieval commentaries not in the original edition. Among them are those
of Yosef Kara, Yosef Bekhor Shor and Yosef Kaspi. Also in original edition of the Mikraot
Gedolot the commentaries of the Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi) on Psalms and of Ibn Ezra on
Isaiah aren’t found though they do appear on other books, but they do appear in the Keter
edition. The amount of work involved in preparing the text of each commentary varied
according to the material available. For example, dozens of manuscripts of Rashi’s
commentary were available for comparison while only one manuscript each exists of the
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commentaries of Yosef Kara and Yosef Ibn Kaspi on the former Prophets. In some cases
early printed editions were also consulted.
FORMAT OF THE TEXT IN THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF THE
MIKRAOT GEDOLOT
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FORMAT OF THE TEXT IN MIKRAOT GEDOLOT HAKETER
Innovations in this edition of the Mikraot Gedolot are numerous. First of all, all the
texts are in block Hebrew letters. Commentaries were traditionally printed in what is called
Rashi script, not the script that Rashi used but that in which his commentary was originally
printed. This, for many, makes them difficult to decipher.
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RASHI SCRIPT BLOCK LETTERS
In addition, in the commentaries in the traditional Mikraot Gedolot, verses are often
quoted without indicating that it is a quotation, and usually only part of the verse appears in
the commentary because at that time everyone knew their Bible. In Mikraot Gedolot haKeter
quotations are enclosed in quotation marks and complete verses are cited. Also abbreviated
references to other sources in the commentaries are given in their full form so the reader won’t
first have to figure out to what he is being referred. An further feature is the addition of
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punctuation in the commentaries, a fact that can be critical, such as when not knowing if a
certain word is part of the previous or following phrase---which in some cases changes the
commentary’s meaning entirely. And the opening words of each comment are highlighted to
alleviate the need to search for the end of one comment and the beginning of the next.
An addition of major importance to this edition is a commentary on the Masorah
called Ein haMasorah ( עין המסור ה ( written by Professor Cohen. The Masorah is hard to
understand unless one has devoted much time to mastering its style. This commentary fills in
cryptic notations and adds relevant information such as citing a Masorah comment on a
certain text that may appear for a parallel text elsewhere in the Bible but not for this one. For
example, using the text in Genesis cited above which says that the word Vehaaretz appears at
the beginning of eight verses, it might be that the Masorah only makes this comment on seven
of the eight verses but Ein haMasorah adds it on the eighth verse.
An additional illustration of the contribution of Ein haMasorah can be shown using
the same example from Genesis. In the Masorah Parva the letters פ"ח ר appear– a shorthand
notation. The Masorah Magna gives the meaning of the letters and quotes the beginning of
the eight verses. Ein Masorah in this case adds the location of the verses. This commentary
appears beneath the Masorah Magna on each page. Included also in each volume is a listing
of abbreviations used in the texts, Biblical, Targumim and commentaries, and their full forms.
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The first volume of the new edition appeared in 1992 after 10 years of preparatory
work. Included were the books of Joshua and Judges. Publication was begun with these
books and not with Genesis, the first book of the Bible, for a number of reasons. First, the
Keter text existed. Second, the number of commentaries involved isn’t as large as for other
books. Third, before tackling more complicated books the team wanted to accrue experience.
And, finally, the Torah is considered Divinely dictated and the team didn’t want to chance
opposition from very conservative elements in the Jewish community at the outset of the
project. They, so to speak, wanted to establish their credentials before publishing Torah
volumes. To date nine volumes containing ten Biblical books have appeared and the team’s
goal is to complete the entire work within the next five years. A comprehensive introduction
to the project and the literature involved appears in the first volume published and Professor
Cohen has planned essays on the French and Spanish schools of commentators for inclusion in
future volumes.
Complete preparation of the texts for printing is done by the project team. First,
after the correct text has been established, it is transferred to a form with codes indicating how
exactly the type for the printed version is to be set. Then the contents of these forms are keyed
into the computer. The next stage is to run the computerized data through a program that
arranges the text according to the instructions encoded with it. Finally the text is transferred
to another program which divides it into pages for printing. After all this machine generated
work a real human being checks that the page divisions are in logical places.
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Accompanying the printed edition is a computerized database on CD-ROM. The
first edition included all the Biblical text and the specially developed search engine. In the
second edition, now in beta site testing, the Masorah, some of the Targumim and all the
commentaries are included. It is planned that a third edition will include the reasoning behind
decisions concerning which form of the text to accept in disputed cases.
The main screen of the search engine is composed of three tiers. On the first the
letters sought are entered. The middle tier allows vowels to be placed under the letters and the
lower tier accommodates the cantillation notations that might appear on the word.
SEARCH SCREEN
Special pads, based on the idea of the number pad on the computer keyboard, are provided on
the screen to facilitate filling in the vowels and the cantillation notes.
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VOWEL PAD
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CANTELLATION NOTE PAD
3) commentary and commentary
The results of a search will appear as follows:
.
Each appearance of the term requested is clearly marked and in the upper left corner of the
screen the number of times the term appears in the text is noted. By scrolling down all
occurrences of the search term can be viewed.
Another feature of the search engine is the ability to display items side by side on a
split screen. This can show two Biblical texts, a Biblical text and commentary or two
commentaries. Below is a split screen showing the versions of the fourth commandment from
books of Exodus and Deuteronomy
There are additional features, including many of those that have made Bar Ilan’s Responsa
Project such an important resource.
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The CD comes with a detailed instruction book structured in lesson form to allow
the user to make the utmost use of the program. At this stage only a Hebrew version is
available.
As yet the CD-ROM database hasn’t been released for general use, but to many of
those who have used the computerized version of the Keter it seems that this project is
destined to contribute as much to the field of Biblical studies as Bar Ilan’s widely heralded
Responsa Project has to halachic and historical studies.
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